Halifax-based 2nd Act Innovations, Inc. has recruited Reza Kazemipour as CEO and Guillaume Oget as Chief Technology Officer. Both individuals have entrepreneurial experience in Silicon Valley and, in the case of Kazemipour, in Canada. Through its flagship software, Oris4, 2nd Act Innovations provides enterprise content management. The company received seed financing in 2012 from a group of investors, including GrowthWorks Atlantic Venture Fund and InNOVAcorp. Kazemipour is heading up efforts to raise an additional C$5 million.
Canadian private equity firm Pinetree Capital has invested C$1 million in Augusta Industries, Inc., a developer and manufacturer of patented non-intrusive sensing systems. Fox-Tek, Inc., one of the wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Oakville, Ontario-based Augusta, was also backed with investments by Pinetree at the time of the company's launch in 2001.
Canada's top private equity firms have slowed their recruitment of new professional talent, says a report by Tim Kiladze of The Globe and Mail. In 2010 and 2011, institutional funds like CPP Investment Board - Private Investments, OMERS Private Equity, and Teachers Private Capital were bulking up staffs to help manage the increased pace of global deal-making, recruiting from investment banks and Bay Street veterans. However, personnel appears to be reaching full complements, with OMERS and Teachers growing staff by only 10% in 2012, The Globe and Mail reports.
More U.S.-based VCs and acquirers came up to Canada in 2012, looking for good deal flow, rational valuations and inexpensive buys.
FedDev Ontario, the economic development agency of the Government of Canada, will invest up to C$975,000 in Well.ca Inc., a Guelph, Ontario-based company which sells a variety of health and beauty products online. Well.ca is a portfolio company of iNovia Capital, a Montréal-based venture capital firm.
Just three months after raising startup capital from iNovia Capital , parcel storage service Bufferbox of Waterloo, Ontario, has been acquired by Google for a reported US$17 million.
An overview of Canada’s buyout and private equity market in Q3 2012, produced by Thomson Reuters for Canada’s Venture Capital & Private Equity Association
Canadian retail icon Hudson's Bay Co. (HBC) on Monday completed its initial public offering (IPO) totaling C$365.1 million, according to Reuters. The IPO follows a long period of reorganization since the company was taken private in 2006, and sold to New York PE firm NRDC Equity Partners LLC in 2008.
The Institutional Limited Partners Association, the main group advocating for best practices between institutional investors and private equity firms, named Michael Mazzola, the head of alternative investments at MetLife, as its new board chairman. The appointment was effective on Nov. 7th.